


Christmas Wrapping: Timestamp

by romanticalgirl



Category: Fantastic Four (Movieverse)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-14
Updated: 2013-04-14
Packaged: 2017-12-08 12:37:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/761385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanticalgirl/pseuds/romanticalgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Originally posted 7-20-08</p>
    </blockquote>





	Christmas Wrapping: Timestamp

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted 7-20-08

Reed has a number of notebooks that he knows he should get rid of or at least transfer to the computer, but something about them makes him hang onto them. Maybe it’s the nostalgia or the precise scratch of his childish writing, but he can’t quite give up the battered and worn red composition book he’s had since he was three and a half years old, a Christmas gift from Aunt Carolyn who was smart enough to ask him what he wanted instead of getting him yet another sweater with poodles on it like Aunt Denise always did.

The book was divided into four major sections and each section subdivided even further. The first, titled “Family” was broken down into his parents and the few relatives that he felt required to exchange presents with, though the number dwindled rapidly after he made the mistake of sending Uncle Andrew something that was stable when it left his house, but exploded underneath the Christmas tree after his cousin, Archibald, shook it to try to figure out what was inside.

Even his parents eventually discouraged him from buying them or, worse yet, making them things and so the last thing written in there was “anti-matter device, 1981”. He tries not to remember that Christmas if he can help it. Fortunately, the previous year’s gift of “short term memory re-enhancer, 1980” came in handy when the local police arrived.

The second section is entitled friends, and only Ben’s name is there, most of the others scratched out before any gift was ever listed beneath them. Ben’s list is actually the only one with anything remotely practical, since it is written entirely in Ben’s own handwriting, lists of types of beer and types of booze, one per line dating from the year Reed turned twenty-one until the year Ben’s due to turn eighty.

The third section is colleagues, and that contains better classes of wine and alcohol than Ben’s, as well as a fruit basket, cookie basket and other pre-packaged arrangement that a very wise secretary once made for him before she left, demanding that he pay her wages before she gutted him with the letter opener she’d stolen from the company down the hall. Since the run in with the cosmic radiation, he’s met a different class of colleague and so his gifts have ventured into the more esoteric, but still, he does his best to remember that even people with mutant powers and egomaniacal traits like a good bottle of scotch.

The last section doesn’t have a title, and Reed places the names of the people he can’t quite yet classify there. Sue’s name is there along with far too much blank space. He’s written in her favorite perfume, but she rarely wears it, and already has four bottles. Bottles he noticed one night, lined up on her dresser like a warning. Johnny’s name is there too with “clothes” written and crossed out about fifteen times. Each line is darker than the last, and the final one has Johnny’s messy scrawl next to it warning him “Do not buy me clothes, Richards, under penalty of death”. 

Reed sighs and looks over at the calendar, the vivid reminder that Christmas is only a few days away. He picks up his pen and presses it to the last line on Johnny’s page and very carefully scratches the pen across the paper, once more writing “Clothes”.


End file.
